Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I opted to bound down the stairs rather than take the elevator, seeing as I was fairly sure I was heading into a combat situation. The rising scent of gunpowder, and smoke not attached to Sylas shortly confirmed it.

I paused behind the final door to listen, before bursting into the lobby, in time to see Sylas wrapping the tree with what looked like intestines— they were —and then I stood there for a whole ten silent seconds just wishing I hadn’t seen it, before I noticed twenty corpses on the ground.

“Ace!” Sylas shouted, sounding much more friendly, scooping the guts out of another downed man. He flung these towards the lobby’s door, where they skidded wetly on the tile. “How many of them am I allowed to kill?”

“Uh—” I stuttered. “As many as it takes for my girlfriend to do her thing—but what the fuck, man? That’s disgusting!”

Sylas dusted his hands free of blood before putting them to his baby sling and soothing his child. “That’s the point. There’s nothing more demoralizing than slipping in the blood of your downed fellow fighter.”

I guessed I couldn’t disagree.

“We’re almost full, aren’t we?” Sylas cooed to the tiny burden he held.

I looked from him, to the outside of the building again, where no one else seemed interested in running up, for highly understandable reasons. “Uh…so…you’ve got things handled?”

Sylas gave an affronted snort. “It isn’t really even challenging.”

“Okay, well, call me if that changes,” I said, jumping in the elevator to ride back up.

I raced back to the server room once the door opened, and found Nex and Sarah working with one of her eyes on the plate, with her giving him instructions.

“I’m back,” I announced, so she’d know.

“How are things?” she asked, looking over.

“Turns out he has shit fairly under control.”

“I think we’re ready,” Nex said. “I cannot guarantee you will be able to use this orb again when I am through with it—and you might want to look away. I wouldn’t want to damage any of the circuits in your remaining eye.”

“Understood,” Sarah said, pushing her chair back, and standing up.

Two of Nex’s armatures dropped down from the ceiling, and started doing things to the eyeball she’d left behind, creating bright lights behind her back. One of her mechanical eyes was still in place, while the other socket was empty.

“I don’t like people seeing me like this,” she said, reaching back quickly for her blindfold.

“Okay,” I said, because it was up to her. “Just as long as we both agree, I’m not people.”

Half of her lips twisted up into a smile.

“Aceon,” Nex said from overhead. “I’ve detected an external threat to the building.”

“Sylas is fine, I promise,” I said.

“Not from the lobby—from outside. There are several hundred drones armed with explosives approaching the building.”

“Why?” I asked.

Sarah gasped. “Because while your building is bombproof—I’m betting your transmission antenna is not,” she said.

“Quite right,” Nex agreed.

“Nex, how long will it take for you to upload my data?” Sarah asked.

“If you want every MSA branch in the world to release it simultaneously, it will take 12 minutes and 34 seconds to propagate across my network with the required redundancy,” Nex told her.

“Is this where the action is?” Sylas asked, coming into the room.

“Not anymore,” I told him, before looking to Sarah. “Stay here. This place should be safe.” But what Sylas and I were going off to do likely was not. “Also? I love you,” I said, before running into the hall and closing the door behind me.

“So it’s like that, is it?” Sylas teased, surging along side me, before disappearing completely.

“You’d better be going up!” I hollered, hoping he would hear, before I hit the elevator doors.